Van Gogh created forty-seven self-portraits during his lifetime which reflect a wide range inspiration and reveal a plethora of emotions. These self-portraits help us see Van Gogh as he saw himself through his conflicts of identity and his struggle to escape the French café. The following analysis focuses on Van Gogh’s self-portraits as they coincide chronologically with his various paintings of La Guinguette, The Café Terrace at Night, and Starry Night in order to better understand Van Gogh’s personal transformation as he struggle to overcome the French café.
1886
1888
1889
Before the Café
In one of Van Gogh’s first self-portraits, painted in the spring of 1886 before his exposure to the Parisian café at La Guinguette, Van Gogh seems to be sure of his identity as an artist. Van Gogh also looks healthy and assertive in this painting as he tightly grips his palette and assertively stares at the viewer. The modern looking chapeau in this self-portrait reveals Van Gogh’s transformation into a city slicker, and thus, his introduction to the Parisian café.
1886
Toward the end of 1886, Van Gogh had become a frequent visitor of the café. In this portrait, Van Gogh looks dark, reclusive, and unhappy. The dark colors Van Gogh uses to paint this portrait are also similar to the dark browns, blacks and greens he uses to paint La Guinguette. Van Gogh has also chosen to include a pipe in this portrait. Perhaps this serves to tell the viewer that Van Gogh has accepted drugs as part of quotidian life.
1888
When Van Gogh painted the Café Terrace at Night in 1888, he was absorbed in the culture of the café. He was a frequent drinker of absinthe. A.M. Hammacher, author of Van Gogh A Documentary Bibliography, tells us that this point in Van Gogh’s life was characterized by a “disturbed equilibrium” in which Van Gogh was unable to resist his addiction to absinthe and to the café. Van Gogh said that the “café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime” (Van Gogh: 534). In this portrait, early 1888, Van Gogh’s unhealthy looking mien certainly appears to be in a state of ruin.
Later in 1888, Van Gogh paints a self-portrait in which appears to have gone mad. The ominous green in the background add power to Van Gogh’s menacing glare. Van Gogh’s bald head and gaunt face look deathly. Van Gogh has been consumed by the “terrible passions of humanity” (Van Gogh: 534) that existed in the café that he has “ruined himself” (Van Gogh: 534). Van Gogh’s self-destruction and fatigue evidence themselves in this portrait, and we may assume that Van Gogh realized that he needed to escape the café. This is equally evidenced in his painting of the Café Terrace at Night in which Van Gogh physically detaches himself from the café and begins to focus on the natural quietude and tranquility of the outdoors as he focuses on the stars outside the café. After having realized that he was in his own words “an almost drunkard and an almost invalid” (Van Gogh: 544), Van Gogh leaves the café and paints Starry Night in 1889.
1889
In 1889, we see a stronger, healthier Van Gogh. In his self-portrait, 1889, Van Gogh looks quite dapper. Van Gogh appears to have accepted who he has become as he fails to hide his face behind a beard or the shadow of a hat. In his painting of Starry Night, Van Gogh focuses primarily on the purity of the outdoors where the café light exists only as a spot on the horizon, suggesting that he has left many of his attractions to the ruinous temptations of the café behind.